


(Peace and I Are) Strangers Grown

by 28ghosts



Category: Assassin's Creed: Syndicate - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Assassins/Templars, F/M, M/M, Minor Drug and Alcohol Use, just bad dads and trust funds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-12
Updated: 2018-03-12
Packaged: 2019-03-30 09:50:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13949043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/28ghosts/pseuds/28ghosts
Summary: Jacob had always figured that Evie had it all figured out, since she was the older one and all.Turns out four minutes doesn't make that much of a difference.





	(Peace and I Are) Strangers Grown

When Evie doesn't answer her phone for the first time Jacob calls her that morning, he doesn't think much of it. And any other Sunday he would have figured she was busy or still asleep or otherwise preoccupied in a way he really, really didn't want to know about. But it's their birthdays next week. And even during the years where Jacob really hated Evie and Evie really hated Jacob, they managed to organize at least a half-day truce for birthday-type things. Sometimes it only lasted a couple of hours, but hey, even that was something. So he doesn't even think about it; he just calls Henry.

No answer from Henry.

Jacob groans at the ceiling. He's a bit hungover and not looking to his shift starting, and Ned's not even free tonight -- he's got plenty of bullshit errands to run and dishes to clean and things like that. Which is probably why he goes fuck it and calls Henry's shop. What the hell, maybe that's where Evie is.

He doesn't actually expect Henry to answer though. But that's the chap's voice coming through the phone, tinny and irritated: “Green’s Antiquities, how can I help you."

He doesn't sound like he wants to help anyone at all, which cheers Jacob instantly. It's always a pleasure getting under Henry's skin. "Morning, Greenie. Is Evie round?"

"Ah, good morning, Jacob," Henry says. "I guess it falls to me to tell you that we no longer happen to be seeing each other. So no, Evie is not here. Nor do I know where she is. Does that answer your question sufficiently?"

It's the last bloody thing he expected to hear. "What the hell, mate?"

The fact that Henry doesn't immediately hang up on him is disturbing. Henry doesn't like Jacob, and Jacob doesn't like Henry. And yet here they are, Jacob lending a willing ear and Henry more uncertain than Jacob's quite comfortable with. "I don't know what to tell you. It happened Tuesday evening, and she sent someone round to pick up her things Wednesday afternoon."

"Who did she send? She doesn't have any friends."

Henry sighs the way he always does when Jacob's being a bit meaner to Evie than he really needs to be. "A young woman named Clara," he says. "And wouldn't you figure but she nicked a couple bottles on the way out the shop."

Jacob scratches at his stomach and lets out a low whistle. And then something occurs to him, which he has somehow, in this treacherous moment, forgotten, despite the fact he never forgets when it comes to Henry: this is now his sister's ex-boyfriend, and it's Jacob's job to maybe go slash a few tires or at least threaten to, right?

"What the hell did you do to bring this all on, Greenie?"

"If you find out, I'd very much appreciate if you passed that information along," Henry says, and *then* he hangs up on Jacob.

He nearly calls Henry again, but no way in hell he picks up. And then something occurs to him. He scrolls through his texts and call logs. Nothing from Evie in more than a week. Which given how busy she keeps isn't that unusual, but nothing about breaking up with her bloody boyfriend?

So Jacob does what he always does when he's in over his head: he calls Ned.

-

 

They'd both moved to London after Dad had died. It had taken Dad a real long time to die, of course. They'd both kind of figured he'd kick the bucket while they were off at uni, but then Jacob had dropped out and of course been around the family estate to watch him just get worse and worse.

And as long as Evie hadn't been round, it was the best he and Jacob had ever gotten along. Typical of the bastard to only come to terms with the sort of son he'd raised once he was on the way out. When Evie did manage to make it home for a weekend here and there, Jacob figured out pretty quick it was best for everyone considered that he nip out for a weekend in London rather than sticking around and ending up in yet another screaming match with a dying man. Didn't mean he always did it, of course. Sometimes it was worth it just to see Evie and Dad actually at each other's throats for once.

Dad died a month before Evie was set to start her pupillage. She'd gotten it deferred, of course. Come back to the estate to help with the funeral (alright, pretty much plan everything to do with the funeral), bookkeeping stuff like that. Jacob did his best to help, which probably hadn't been that good, and it would have been better to just keep his nose out of things. Really it worked out that it didn't take long for him to get stircrazy and start going into London every weekend just to go drink and fight somewhere, come home with bruises and all his manic energy diffused.

It was where he'd met Ned.

Evie knew better than to scold him for it. At least he was fighting people who'd shown up to fight someone, not slugging strangers in bars just for the hell of it like the old days. And besides, she understood. She did something similar; it was just that she ran. She'd go out for hours with her headphones in. He got worried once or twice. Shouldn't have. Anyone who tried to haul Evie off would probably get his neck snapped for his trouble. She'd come back grinning spacily. She got it. Sometimes you just needed to get your heart pounding for a good long while. Sometimes that was the only thing you could do.

He always wondered what she'd listened to during those runs. Evie wasn't big into music or anything like that. Probably audio courses on law, or interviews with barristers reflecting how they wished they'd done things different during their pupillages.

After the funeral, after divvying up the estate, after getting drunk with Evie night after night on the rooftop where they used to smoke as kids, they left it. They shared a flat for all of two weeks before realizing sharing a flat was the absolute dumbest idea they'd ever had, and they'd had some roaringly dumb ideas, the two of them. The Frye family wasn't one for half-measures.

So he’d helped Evie move. Some sterile place closer to work, Evie arriving with all of ten boxes. A spot of unpacking and then to the pub a few streets away—

Which is where a man who looked vaguely familiar peeled away from his rather ragtag group and, just on the obsequious side of polite, said, “You must be the Frye twins.”

-

 

"Interesting," Ned says.

Jacob has his phone jammed between shoulder and ear and is trying to keep his bacon from burning. "You know how she was about him. How the hell could he have screwed something up so badly that Evie would leave him? I've got a few guesses myself, none of them good."

He can all but hear Ned shaking his head over the phone. "If it had been something like that, you would have heard about it."

"The hell else would make her leave him?"

"You won't be shocked to hear me say that only she can tell you that."

"Americans. Always talking about your feelings. What nonsense."

Ned huffs a laugh at that. "It's worked pretty well for me so far."

Which makes his stomach do that dropping thing that he hates, absolutely hates, does not enjoy, he is not grinning goofily at absolutely nothing. "Can't argue with you there," he manages to say.

Ned laughs. Jacob's bacon is burning.

"Call her again, text her, leave her a voicemail, whatever it is you usually do. Maybe check in with some of her friends. I'm sure she's fine, but you'll rest easier knowing she isn't missing."

Which, damn the man, was true.  "I haven't the slightest idea who her friends are," he says, "except apparently someone named Clara."

"Have you tried her apartment?"

"Wynert, you're a genius."

"And if you hadn't thought of that, I'm assuming you're hungover." Ned's voice is droll now.

"Fair enough."

"Let me know when you find her," Ned says.

Jacob slides his bacon onto a plate one-handed and glances at the clock above the stove. It's half-past eleven. He's due at the gym at five. "Will do. Wish me luck, love."

"Good luck," Ned says.

Jacob eats and showers even though he'll be soaking in sweat again come 5:15. It's actually a bit of a nice day, though wedging the window open and sniffing the air he reckons it rains later. This being London, those odds are admittedly good more or less every day. Unless it's likely to snow instead.

He tries calling Evie again. It rings before going to voicemail, and the only thing he can think to say is, "Hi, Evie, it's our birthday next week, where are you? Oh, and let me know if I need to murder Greenie or anything."

When he calls back again ten minutes later it goes straight to voicemail. Maybe Ned has a point about feelings and things like that. "I'm worried about you" probably would've gone over better.

-

 

Heterosexuality is a scourge, he'd texted Ned.

Always true, Ned replied.

Evie and this fellow who knew my dad are trying to flirt while talking about how they both got piss drunk at the funeral, he texted back.

Ned: Even worse than I'd feared  
Ned: Fuck at the funeral or not at all

He took his sweet fucking time ordering at the bar. Watched them out of the corner of his eye for a bit. They kept talking for long enough that he expected Henry to sit down, but he just sort of hovered awkwardly at Evie's shoulder.

Please God just let one of them offer to buy the other one a drink, he thought. Flirt sitting next to each other at the bar like normal people.

Things were slow, so he and the bartender commiserated about the weather, the usual bullshit.  Had a pint before getting another one and  ordering food for the both of them, around which point Henry finally left.

Jacob moseyed on back to the table with two glasses. "Wow," he said.

Evie had her face in her hands. "I can't believe I called him Mr. Green," she said.

He sat down across from her and pushed one of the glasses towards her. "Yes, you probably made him feel very old. Drink up."

She did, actually, which was a telltale sign she really was that flustered. "Do you think?" she asked, after draining half the glass.

"Oh, I don't know," Jacob drawled. "Regardless, he seemed charmed enough. When's the wedding?"

She ground the heels of her hands into her eyes. "Quit it, Jacob."

"Quit what?" he asked. "I just want what's best for you. I'm thinking a spring--"

She kicked him in the shin under the table, which to be fair he deserved. "It's not like that. He was just being nice."

"Very nice," Jacob said. And when that earned him a glare, "What? I was agreeing with you!"

It wasn't long before one of the servers brought their lunch over, which was exactly as middling as a pub lunch ought to be. Evie tried valiantly to talk about other things. The bar exam coming up, and Jacob's job at the gym. It was, to be honest, absolutely hilarious. Jacob humored her, but made it obvious he was humoring her, which clearly annoyed her, but she was so twisted up about it that she couldn't even snap at him. Absolutely fantastic.

More beer, and what had been a late lunch merged seamlessly into honest daydrinking. The two of them were absolutely the drunkest two louts in the whole place, least til the dinner crowds started pushing in and they finally paid up and went back to Evie's half-unpacked apartment.

"At least tell me you got his number," Jacob said, once the door was shut.

She covered her face again. Getting to be a bad habit, really. "We traded numbers, yes."

"Well, that's good, but -- Evie -- Evie, listen to me, this is vitally important -- who suggested it? Evie--"

"He did!"

He grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her gently until she at least looked at him through her fingers. "Evie," he said. "Evie, this is serious."

Her eyes widened at that.

"Do you need me to leave? Because you could absolutely get laid tonight--"

She shoved him, and he tumbled back and laughed and laughed. An hour later, he went somehow drunkenly negotiated the Tesco's liquor aisle and self-checkout and Evie somehow drunkenly negotiated getting chips and kebab. They met back at the apartment and got some stupid panel show reruns and both slept on the floor.

So it all would have been fine and dandy if Evie and Henry had just started dating like normal people, but instead there'd been three entire months of 'We went to the Royal Botanical Gardens but was it really a date' and 'Did you know there's an arboratoreum in Kent?' and on and on and fucking on. By the time one of them finally put their tortured sexual tension out of its misery -- who it had been Jacob didn't know and never wanted to know -- he knew enough about England's botanical institutions that he actually won the Toppington team a few rounds of pub trivia here and there.

But Evie didn't have to know that. 

-

 

Twenty minutes on the Tube and five minutes of half-jogging and he's pounding on Evie's apartment door. She doesn't answer, of course, though it's hard to know if that's since she's out or because she's decided she's ignoring him. When he crouches to look under the bottom edge of the door where the weatherstrip never quite fits right, it looks like the lights are off. But who knows if that means anything. Best to sulk in the dark anyways. Jacob goes out and sits on the stoop of her building for awhile, figuring she might come back from wherever it is she is, if she's even out, but thirty minutes and no luck and he's getting restless.

It really is a nice day. Time to try and think like Evie: Gorgeous day, awful mood, where do I go? He kicks himself for not thinking of it further -- no way she's not on a run.

The Bakerloo to Regent's Park it is. The Tube is packed with people clearly also headed to the park, couples and families and young people. It all makes him a bit queasy. He's not claustrophobic, and he's not antisocial, but it all feels so respectible. Nice people going to the park on a nice day. Also, he's still hungover.

He follows the signs to the athletic track, and there she is. Sitting on one of the benches by the track instead of running, though. She doesn't look up when he flops down next to her.

She mops sweat off her forehead with the back of her hand. "I suppose I should be impressed you managed to track me down," she says.

"Lucky guess."

"I hope you didn't come all this way just to offer to murder Henry again." Her voice is terse, angrier than he expected.

"Not just," Jacob says. He deliberately slouches back more in the chair, surveying the park in front of them. Tries to project an air of calm. "I offer other services as well. Slashed tires, broken windows, a few things nipped from the shop -- though I hear your friend Clara's maybe got the market cornered on that one."

Evie nearly laughs at that. "I didn't ask her to, you know."

"I figured. You would've had her steal something more valuable."

"Clara's just like that."

"Did you break up with Henry because you've been secretly seeing this person named Clara? Because if so, congratulations on your break from heterosexuality, I promise it'll do you good--"

Evie groans and gets up and starts running again. Jacob tips his head back and closes his eyes and lets his body soak up the rare London sun. He has half a mind to join her, but he has got his shift hanging over his head, so better not push it. He only opens his eyes when he hears Evie's footsteps coming closer, more slowly. He can hear her breathing, too. Huge heaving breaths.

"I didn't break up with Henry for anyone, least of all Clara," she says. She just sounds like plain, normal Evie now; she could be talking about changing the wallpaper in her flat again for all her tone gives away. "And it wasn't anything he did. Things just changed, and it was time. That's all, and I'd really rather not talk any more about it."

"You're not even going to ask how I learned."

"Henry texted me," she says.

Jacob nearly says *It's not a real breakup until you've blocked each other's numbers, you know*, but he can all but hear Ned scolding him. "Alright," he says. "If you're sure. Let me know if you change your mind."

She scrunches up her nose and stares at him, wary. She's absolutely soaked with sweat, but her breathing is almost back to normal.

He scrunches his nose back at her. "You finally training for that marathon?"

There's no way she trusts the change in subject, but she nods slowly. "I'd thought about it," she says, with deliberate equanimity. 

"Well, no time like the present."

"The best time is always tomorrow, far as I'm concerned," Jacob says breezily.

"You would say that."

He pushes himself off the bench so they're standing face-to-face. They've always been about the same height. Evie's got bags under her eyes like he hasn't seen since the week before she was called to the bar, and the corners of her eyes are a little bloodshot. "I'll leave you be, but get back to me about the whole... birthday thing," he says.

"Birthday thing."

He shrugs and makes a face. "We've got to do something, haven't we?"

"I guess."

He considers trying to hug her, but she's got her hands on her hips and still looking at him suspiciously, like he might blindside her with another attempt to figure out what the hell is going on. Which doesn't seem like a thing she should be so defensive about, but that's neither here nor there. And besides, she really is soaked in sweat. So instead he awkwardly punches her in the shoulder and says, "Swing by the gym sometime."

"Maybe," she says.

And that's it. He takes the tube back to his own flat because what the hell else is he going to do til work starts, and none of it makes sense at all.

Yes, Evie is the sort to have every form filed in triplicate. And she's so organized that she's the only person Jacob's ever even heard of to kind of like moving. She actually enjoys packing things up in boxes and labeling them. 

He's helped her move what, three, four times now? First there's the packing up and the first round of culls: books she's decided she doesn't need anymore, clothes she hasn't worn recently. Papers to be scanned and then shredded, dishes and furniture pared down, deciding whether or not to take the curtains. Unpacking there's a second round of it, and it drives Jacob mad. He's the type to unpack everything at once and then figure out where it goes, where Evie goes through every box methodically, considering seriously whether she needs every item that made the last cut.

So in a way, he can imagine her taking a breakup like this.

Thing is, for all Evie's seriousness in her studies and her working life, she's never been like that personally. With what friends she had in uni, the few boyfriends she'd briefly had. Jacob hadn't really been there for most of those breakups, excepting the Caldwell kid in A-levels. And she'd moped for a month about that.

Then again, she'd still managed to keep up with her life during those. No week-long benders and resulting overnights for drunk and disorderlies; no friends having to keep you from drunkenly showing up at your ex's flat to try and talk things out just one more time. No agonizingly long break-ups where both of you knew it was over but neither of you wanted to be the person who pulled the trigger on it.

So break-ups are just another thing she's better at than me. It wasn't a kind thought, but it did the job of schooling his worry into irritation, which was a feeling he was vastly more comfortable with. By the time he got into work, it barely bothered him. Evie would tell him eventually or wouldn't. They'd do their birthday thing. Life was okay for the most part, and that was good.

-

 

Hadn't always been like that, of course. He'd been working at the gym for coming up on three years, only a year of that full-time. It'd been in the middle of a bar brawl that Robert Toppington had introduced himself. Toppington had a small franchise of gyms, he'd told Jacob in the wake of the typical aftermath: the lot of them turned out onto the curb, told never to come back lest the proprieters call the cops, etc. The usual spiel.

Wasn't just normal gyms, though. Part that, yes, but boxing classes, and MMA, self-defense, a whole list of martial arts practices that Jacob had heard of but figured no one actually practiced.

And, of course, fights. Completely illegal, also as a matter of course, and often brutal. But safer than your usual back garden boxing match, and there was usually some sort of cutman with alcohol and gauze if nothing else. And the rings were cleaned between nights, which also wasn't always a given.

First Toppington had invited him just to fight. They were always looking for new blood, he said, or at least people whose kneecaps hadn't been shattered more than once. Jacob fit the bill nicely. While Dad was taking his time dying, that was where Jacob went on the weekends. Sometimes to fight. Sometimes just to watch. He'd cluster round the ring with the other regulars and they'd pass flasks around and heckle and jeer.

Everyone once and awhile Jacob took it a bit too far, and some roid-raged boxer would launch over the side of the ring to take a swing at him. The crowds really loved that part.

After Dad was finally in the ground and Jacob in London, Toppington asked if he'd ever taught. He hadn't. No bother, said Toppington; how'd you like to learn? Which was how Jacob ended up assistant for Toppington Gym self defense night classes, and then eventually staffing the desk sometimes, and then subbing for the full-time instructors when they were sick or injured, and without quite realizing it he suddenly had a real and actual full-time job.

There was part of Jacob that was viciously glad every time he did something that would've made Dad proud after he'd become too dead to see it. But then he resented the way Ethan Frye still made him feel like a sullen fourteen-year-old throwing his fists through windows even from beyond the grave. There was no winning, except to try and forget about him at all, and that felt wrong, too.

He'd drunkenly unloaded all of this onto Ned maybe the third time they'd met, and Ned, bloody American that he was, had listened and shrugged and said he felt the same way about his family. That was one of the things he'd liked about Ned instantly. No overbearing sympathy, no pity or horror when Jacob mentioned some particularly shitty thing that had happened once. Just someone who got it and who had his back. He tried to do the same thing for Ned and was assuredly worse at it. But he was getting better.

-

 

Work is good. He's assisting with a self-defense class that's mostly women, though there's a handful of guys there too, split evenly between reedy enough to look like targets and big enough to also look like targets. Always a weird energy in those classes, but Dizzy is good at lightening the mood, and everyone always likes to see her put Jacob in a headlock and mock-knee him in the balls. Dizzy is somewhere north of fifty years old and a righteous terror. Jacob adores her, though tries not to talk to her much outside of classes unless he has ninety minutes to kill. She can really carry on.

When he gets back to his flat, it's just past 11pm. The lights are all out but Ned's left carryout on the counter for him, which means Ned's probably already gone to bed, the old man. He eats with his feet propped up on the kitchen table, which he can do not only because it’s his kitchen table but because Ned isn’t there to tsk at him for it.

There’s a huge cardboard box on the table that Jacob doesn’t recognize. He doesn’t give it too much thought. He finishes eating, showers, and slides into bed next to Ned. He considers flopping on top of him, but Ned’s out cold, so it seems a bit mean. Still, though, he’s tempted.

In the morning, Jacob doesn’t even have to ask about the box. He wanders into the kitchen, where Ned is already showered and dressed and is reading the paper like the old person he is.

"Evie brought that over," Ned says, not looking up from the paper. Clear enough what he’s talking about. "Some of Henry's things, she said. Asked if you could take it over to his place."

Jacob squints and looks at the layers of packing tape wrapped around every seam of the box. "I think she doesn't trust us," he says. *Unless she originally meant for Clara to take this, and Clara is a right klepto and all...*

Ned hmms in agreement into his tea. "There's no discreet way to see what's in there, but I did some exploratory shaking and prodding and I think it's just clothes and books."

"What indiscreet ways are there to see what's in here?"

"Besides just cutting it open?"

Jacob tilts his head, considering. "Or we could run it through one of those security scanners, like at airports. Wouldn't have to open it at all."

"Good thinking, Frye."

"Thank you, Wynert."

"I can swing it by his place if you're busy today," Ned says. "I don't have any appointments until two."

Ned is, hilariously, an art appraiser. In England, that's all he is: a student of art history with a keen eye for the little things that indicate something's a fake, a good mind for what will catch a good price ten years out.

In America he had a different name and an entirely different profession. Still in fine art acquisition, just...a little less legally.

"Nah, I'll take it. Be nice to interrogate him face to face.”

“Now I really think I should take it,” says Ned.

“You just want an excuse to poke around his shop some more,” Jacob says. “You know you can just pop by whenever. He won’t kick you out. You could even go when he’s not working.”

“Ah, but it wouldn’t be the same as the old days,” Ned says airily.

Which is something Ned will eventually tell him about. If he begs enough. Maybe.

-

Ned likes curio shops, antique shops, things like that. He can walk in and scope the whole place in just as much time as it takes to stroll down each row. (Shops like that are always packed, even moreso than Henry’s place.) Jacob’s flat ends up with the strangest odds and ends that’ve caught Ned’s eye but that he doesn’t want to keep for himself: antique silver dishes stowed amongst fakes in a charity shop; first editions of books in languages that Jacob doesn’t speak and will never learn; a bona-fide sword cane from Victorian England that is almost certainly illegal to wander about with in public. (Evie eventually appropriated it and did, indeed, wander about with it in public.)

He always outsources his gift-buying to Ned, who seems not to mind having people in mind to trawl through shops for. One of their first date-dates, though that hadn’t been how he’d thought of it at the time, had actually been Ned helping Jacob moan his way through half the shops in Hampstead. The thing about shopping for Evie was that most of her possessions lasted exactly one move, if that, but she didn’t like chocolate or wine or anything like that well enough that Jacob could get away with giving her that sort of thing. And the whole inheritance thing meant just buying something expensive wasn’t good enough. No, it had to be good, and Evie was always better at it than him, which drove him crazy.

Between three shops, Ned managed to pick out a genuine mother-of-pearl (whatever that was) hairpin and three sets of some sort of rare vintage American sunglasses. Evie still wore the hairpin and at least one of the sets of sunglasses, though the other two had probably re-entered the charity shop ecosystem. Ned was a genius, really.

The first time Ned had met Henry — and one of the only times, actually — had been when they’d swung by the shop to pick up Evie. Jacob had wandered into the back to harrass Evie away from her paperwork and they’d emerged to find Henry and Ned in awkward but excited conversation over the age of some stained glass. It had been very weird.

Even weirder when Evie texted him a week later to ask if he really trusted Ned, oh, no reason, just something Henry said. Jacob had written it off entirely as Henry being paranoid, but then like three months later Ned just casually dropped the fact that he’d been involved in a few high-profile fine art thefts in America several years ago.

Jacob didn’t really know how Henry knew the things he knew and didn’t want to.

 

-

After Ned leaves, Jacob spends more time evaluating the box. It's a big box, about as wide as his shoulders, and heavy enough he can't balance it against himself for very long, though he does try. It’s altogether too unwieldy to transport any way except cab, though his driver isn’t thrilled by the way Jacob kind of has to hip-bump the damn thing to wedge it in behind the passenger seat. Whatever; he tips double.

It’s a Tuesday, which means Henry probably isn’t working. One of the bright-eyed, weirdly eager to please young people who Henry manages to always attract will be working the register, then. Jacob has no business with them. Henry’s flat is above his shop. Though the door with the streetside entrance isn’t marked, Jacob knows well enough how to find it. He’s waited outside for Evie to bound down often enough, goodness knows. He does his best to brace the box against his chest and jams it into the doorbell until he hears someone — Henry, of course — yell, “Alright, alright!”

"Oh, good, you're here," Jacob says, when Henry opens the door, and then he does a double-take and says, "What the hell happened to you, Greenie?"

Henry doesn't look pleased to see him, but the usual irritation isn't quite there. It's like Henry's making the effort to look the usual amount of pissed off but really would rather just skip this part. Henry also has one arm done up in a brace and sling, and the way he's holding himself, shoulders canted just so, a little tilted -- bruised ribs? "Nothing nearly so exciting as whatever you’re thinking, I assure you," he says. He does sound annoyed, at least. "This is a delivery courtesy Evie, I expect?"

"Sure is." He shakes it; it doesn't make much noise. "Where d'you want it?"

Henry steps back from the door and jerks his head towards the stairs in the most resigned 'come on in' gesture imaginable. "Wherever is fine; you can leave it here if you'd like. I'll tend to it later."

"Mate, don't take this the wrong way, but you look like a man under strict doctor's orders not to lift heavy objects."

"You're not wrong."

Of course Henry's not going to actually ask him to do it, but he navigates the bulk of the box through the front door and walks sideways up the stairs. Harder to tip over when you're carrying something heavy that way. Henry follows him up and unlocks what amounts to his actual front door for Jacob and holds it for him.

He's only been inside here maybe three, four times, and usually while pretty drunk, but the place seems familiar enough. Maybe just because it's so much like Henry, though -- jampacked with stuff but still fussy and well-mannered. It's clear he's lived there for years. There's just a certain way things reset every time you move, and there's none of that here. The carpet is faded, the bookshelves are crammed, and there's more potted plants resting on various surfaces than Jacob's ever seen in one place before in his life.

So really there's no good place to put a huge box.

"Er, where should I--"

"Kitchen," he hears from behind him, another room; he steps carefully over a couple piles of old magazines on his way but makes it safely. There are more plants in the kitchen. Of course there are.

"Just on the table would be great," Henry says. "Thank you."

He shoves it on; a few spare papers flutter to the floor, but Henry ignores them. "D'you need me to open it while I'm at it? This is quite a lot of packing tape."

Henry doesn't say anything, but he does slide open a drawer and start rattling around looking for something. A few moments and he turns and lops something over to Jacob underhanded using his good arm.

It's only once Jacob catches it that he realizes it's a boxcutter. "Hey! Be careful."

"It's obviously not opened," Henry says, finally with a bit of humor.

"You never know," Jacob says sternly. He slides the blade out and is careful and slow about cutting through the six or seven layers of tape; just because Henry's hurling knives around doesn't mean he has to, too.

Hurling knives is exclusively for when you're drunk and aiming at a wall. Anything else is just irresponsible.

Maybe he actually opens it up instead of just slicing through the tape and leaving it be, but so sue him. If Henry doesn't talk, this is likely to be the only context he ever gets for why Evie would break up with Henry out of the blue, and he's stlil not sure if he trusts either of them to have been honest about nothing really having happened.

Ned was right. Clothes and books, packed very neatly. Evie really did always love packing.

From behind him, he hears the fridge open and the sound of Henry putting two bottles on the counter. So Jacob smooths the flaps back down like he hasn't just been poking about a box of Henry's things and nonchalantly flops into one of the kitchen chairs.

Henry puts a beer in front of him. Belhaven, Evie's go-to. "Thanks, mate," he says, for lack of anything better to say.

Henry sits adjacent to him so that they're not quite facing each other. He shifts his shoulders and the way his splinted arm rests against his stomach and, with his good arm, reaches  his bottle out. "Cheers," he says.

Jacob taps their bottles together. "Cheers."

"Nothing too exciting in there, I trust," Henry says.

"I barely looked, Scout's honor," Jacob says.

"Doesn't matter anyways; I know what's in there."

"Let me guess. Evie texted you."

"Hmm," agrees Henry.

The silence lasts for all of thirty seconds before Jacob can't stand it anymore, and he says, without thinking, "It wasn't Evie who beat the shit out of you, was it? Greenie, you look awful."

That gets him a short, bleak laugh. "No, it wasn't. I was in a car accident about a week ago. By which I mean I was at a crossing, and a car hit me. Nothing broken though, or so I'm told."

Hit by a car and then broken up with less than a week later? "You've had an awful fucking go of it lately then, haven't you."

Henry laughs hard enough that his intakes of breaths are clearly painful. "Yes, I have," he says.

Right, there’s one more mystery to solve then. While Evie isn’t the sentimental or delicate sort, breaking up with someone shortly after they’ve been hit by a car does seem rather out of character. 

Henry shakes his head as he stands. “Do you still smoke?”

“Do you?”

Henry shoots him a withering glare. “A bit.”

“Well, yes, then, if you’re offering.”

Jacob keeps drinking while Henry rummages through one of his cabinets, then comes back with an old-fashioned cigar box held closed with a rubber band. Takes him a second, but he manages to roll it off one-handed.

"How about I roll," Jacob offers.

Henry fixes him with a look but pushes the wooden box across the table. "Have at it," he says.

He can tell just from the smell of the stuff that it's stale, which isn't surprising. Hard to imagine Henry as a daily smoker after all. "I have to say, I didn't picture you as the sort to have this on hand just like that," he says, and then he licks the edge of the paper.

Henry shrugs his good shoulder. "Good to have round as a host these days."

Which, fair point. That is what he's actually doing right now, isn't it? "Sensible," says Jacob.

"Not that I've a busy schedule for today or anything, but I admit I'm a bit confused why you're still here," Henry says. "You've never been particularly partial to my company; I see no reason why recent events might have changed that."

Jacob licks his thumb and draws it down the seam of the joint instead of answering. Makes sure the end is nice and scrunched up. The lighter from the box is one of those cheap plastic ones, clearly old, and it takes a couple tries for Jacob to get it to light.

As he takes the first drag of it, Henry gets up, goes to the window. Jacob holds it all in his lungs until it starts to burn a bit, then exhales. The smoke hangs in the air.

"I'm worried about her," Jacob says.

Figures he can admit as much to Henry and Ned or any random cabbie, but not his actual sister.

Henry flips some hinge on the window and manages to haul it open even one-armed. Maybe not that surprising -- Henry's pretty strong after all -- but it's funny-looking to watch. The only view is to the side of another building, but at least there's a bit of a breeze out.

"I am as well," Henry says. When he sits back down, he looks unexpectedly amused with himself. "Not that something has to be wrong with someone to break up with me, I mean."

Jacob hmmphs at that and passes the joint over. "I can't speak to that," he says.

Henry takes a drag, passes it back. "I guess maybe it's not so much of a surprise," he says. "She'd been...different lately. Spending more time at work and not wanting to talk about it. I didn't say anything about it; maybe I should have."

Jacob takes a drag, passes it back. Henry watches the burnt end for a moment, the little trailing bits of smoke twisting towards the ceiling.

"I don't know why I didn't," he admits. "Didn't want her to think I was suspicious of something. Or nag her since she was already so busy." He inhales, exhales, passes it back. "Especially this last week, she was barely here. And when she was... I don't know."

Jacob feels a bit like a policeman interviewing everyone associated with a missing persons case. It's disconcerting. "Is that why she called it quits? You know, work?"

"Indeed."

It's starting to hit him a little bit, which is nice. They pass it back and forth again but when Jacob offers it back, Henry shakes his head -- I've had enough, thanks. So then it's just Jacob smoking the rest of a joint in his sister's ex-boyfriend's kitchen, which is admittedly rather awkward, but so be it. 

"Ah, so why are you in particular worried, then?" Henry asks stiffly.

"Can't quite put my finger on it. Something's just...not right with her," he says. He could speak in more detail to it, but it feels a bit cruel to tell the man that his sister doesn't normally take break-ups this well. "I've tried to talk to her about it, but...well."

"I know the feeling."

"She's still texting you though, yeah?"

Henry nods. "Yes. I suppose..." His voice trails off, and he shakes his head.

"You suppose what?"

"Nothing," Henry says. "Something a bit pathetic."

You suppose that's why you haven't given up hope? What a romantic.

Just a few drags left. He drags them. Then he stubs the butt out in one of the saucers left on the table. "I can barely get her to talk to me at all, actually," he says. Which is a bit of an exaggeration. "Evie's usually the one of us with a better head on her shoulders, being older and all, but now it seems like..."

Henry isn't really looking at him. More staring over his shoulder, at the wall and fridge behind him. "Four minutes isn't that much older," he says mildly.

Which, well, is obviously true, but then again, Evie is older. She's the one of them who understands taxes and wills, rental contracts and subletting agreements. It's been like that forever. She's always been the one to know what's really going on. Always been the one to explain again and again how you take the hypoteneuse, the difference between an independant and a dependant clause. That's Evie's whole thing, really.

"It's enough older," Jacob says, deliberately glib.

Henry shakes his head again, though he's smiling. "I won't keep you any longer, Jacob," he says. "Thank you for your help."

Meaning: my patience is starting to wear thin.

Jacob drowns the last of his Belhaven and stands and half-bows, playing at noblesse oblige, even though Evie or even Ned would yell at him for it.

God, he doesn’t have the slightest clue what’s going on. But there’s something off about all this.

-

What was the stupidest thing Evie and Jacob had ever done together? There were a lot of things it could have been. The summer after Year 8 when they’d decided to learn how to knife fight and Evie sliced Jacob’s right eyebrow in half, or the spring before sitting the GCSE when Jacob scored a bit more LSD than anyone should actually take and they’d split it without planning anything? All of that and the winner was probably still the summer they’d spent in Paris and gotten a little too comfortable freight-hopping with some group of crusties from Prague. They hid in a freight car for hours before throwing themselves into an empty field just before a customs check. Took hours before they could hitch another one back into Paris.

It was a marvel they’d survived, really.

And then one day it seemed like Evie turned serious overnight. Stopped being so willing to pull the stupid shit that they’d done together as teenagers, started worrying about uni and jobs and the future — volunteered one summer for Labor and maybe that’d been what ended up giving Dad his first stroke, who knew. That’s what they’d both joked about, in the hospital after the first time. Hadn’t been that funny, but they needed something.

Or maybe it had happened when Jacob wasn’t looking because he’d been tearing about town with Maxwell. Getting into even more trouble than he ever did with Evie. Arrested, once or twice, though Maxwell had a way of making sure that always disappeared. Which should have been sign enough that he was trouble, but Jacob had been 19 and enthralled. Delighted to have a trouble-making partner again, now that Evie was busy with her studies. Evie would have warned him if he’d ever told her about everything him and Maxwell had gotten up to, but that was why Jacob never told her. He knew the whole time it was an enormous mistake, something he’d regret the minute it was over if not before. Bit hard to care when it felt so good, though. And then there’d been the raid, the realizing how deep Maxwell really was with the wrong sorts of dangerous people, and then there’d been Jacob trying to get out of it all and there’d been Maxwell showing up wherever Jacob tried to get away from him and there was even Toppington spooked and then, eventually, there was Maxwell dying on the sidewalk, and Jacob turning away from him dying—

That hadn’t been the first thing to drive him and Evie apart. They were good at finding reasons to hate each other and awful at resolving even the pettiest sorts of confict; finding some way to get into trouble together was the way they always made up. 

But it had been the first thing that made Jacob think maybe they were better apart than together. The way Evie hadn’t been able to quite look him in the eye without looking terrified for a couple of days, the way she didn’t like letting him out of her sight. Really, Jacob had thought — hardly the first time he’d nearly gotten himself killed. Just the first time he’d done it without her. 

He’d been an idiot. They should have talked about it.

But even if they’d tried to talk about it, it wouldn’t have worked — they still would have ended up furious with each other for the better part of a year and a half, ’til Evie’s jaunt with political volunteering and the whole stroke thing. Because neither of them knew how to talk through that kind of thing, and neither one of them knew how to say “I’m worried” or “I apologize.”

Who would have taught them how? Their father, who, when Jacob stumbled into the house with blood pouring down his face and Evie with Jacob’s blood all over her shirt, just shook his head and cleaned the wound and had Evie compress it ’til it stopped bleeding? Who didn’t so much let them raid the liquor cabinet whenever they wanted as much as he didn’t notice? Who didn’t notice they’d been gone hopping trains most of that summer in Paris? Who posted Jacob’s bail without question whenever Maxwell couldn’t slide his bribes through the system in time to keep Jacob from having to spend more than a night or two behind bars? Who didn’t notice that his 19-year-old son was roaming London’s criminal depths under the wing of a 47-year-old part-time explosives enthusiast, part-time revolutionary anarchist?

Good thing he’d had Toppington. And Freddie, too, if reluctantly. It had been a rough couple months after Maxwell died, rougher still since Evie seemed so spooked by it. It had felt like there’d been something between them for awhile, but — well. Jacob had needed to get away from her being worried, and Evie couldn’t stand being worried and ended up angry at him instead since it was easier. He couldn’t blame her; it was the same thing he did. But it had changed things.

Evie had gotten a little bit of that spark back, after Henry. Jacob noticed, at first just because it was fun to torment her about it, but something about Henry seemed to make Evie intense again, like she used to be. They were a bit too old for freight hopping, and Evie didn’t care for the fight clubs that Toppington hosted, but she’d actually dropped in a few times. Once to watch Jacob fight, once just because.

And if she never quite got that terrifying glint in her eyes that used to be so familiar to him, Jacob told himself it was because they were older now. Because Evie was serious about her career now, and because she was older. He’d just figured she’d gone a bit dull as she got older, which perhaps was for the better.

And he’d never stopped to ask himself if maybe he’d stopped getting that glint in his eye, too. And if maybe that was a good thing. They both had things to live for now; maybe a bit of growing up and settling into yourself was being less comfortable with death, less comfortable with standing at the edges of buildings and staring down into streets that could kill you if you took just one step.

Wanting to stay alive just made certain things less appealing. He hadn’t noticed the change in himself, too, but it had happened.

-

Via text, he and Evie agree on getting dinner together. Their birthday is on a Friday this year, so Jacob tries to sell her on going out for the night, but Evie pleads exhaustion from work; just dinner it is. Bit boring, but be nice, he tells himself, heading out. Who knows what’s up with her.

But from the moment Jacob sits down their breadbasket comes, he knows there’s going to be a fight. He can’t say how he knows, but it’s like sticking his head out the window in the morning and smelling the promise of a thunderstorm. An animal part of him knows what’s coming. He tries to grapple with it, to dodge or diffuse it, but some things — especially when it comes to Evie — can’t be stopped.

There’s just this frission of tension that won’t go away. They try to talk about normal things, but Jacob keeps saying things by accident that make Evie scowl at him, then backpedaling and then Evie says something that makes him affronted — by the time their food comes, they’ve been reduced to talking vaguely about the weather.

Horrifying.

And to make things worse, for the first time in recorded history, Evie doesn’t want to talk about work.

That’s usually the go-to, the ground to sink their built-up electrical charge into. There’s always a case, a new client, an interesting bit of legal trivia (or interesting to Evie, at least). This evening, nothing. Jacob tries talking about the gym. Toppington offered him an assistant management position, see, and he prattles on about how he’s not sure if he’s got quite enough bookkeeping skills to make that a good idea—

“You should take it,” Evie says. She’s swabbing bread crust through the last of her soup. “I mean, you can’t do…” She gestures vaguely. “This forever.”

Jacob looks down at himself, trying to work out how insulted to be. “Dress myself?” he guesses.

She rolls her eyes. “Fight,” she says.

“That—” He stabs his fork towards her, squinting. “That’s what I do for fun. I do work there, you know.”

“Right. Teaching,” Evie says. “Teaching fighting.”

Which isn’t quite true. But it’s close enough to make him defensive. “What’s wrong with that? Might not be quite as white-collar as law; doesn’t mean it’s not an honest living.”

“Honest it may be, but something you’ll want to be doing in your fifties I think not.”

Evie is on her second glass of wine, and Jacob swears to himself he’s never going out with Evie again unless there’s alcohol other than wine available. No matter how nice the restaurant. He’d do awful things for a drink that wasn’t wine. “I don’t see why not,” he says. “Dizzy does it.”

“Part-time.”

“So?”

Evie sighs and shoves her empty bowl towards the middle of the table. “I’m just saying. Better to get the experience now so you have the option later.”

Probably as close to a ‘point taken’ as he’ll ever get from her. “Right. But not taking it right now doesn’t mean the offer’s off the table forever. I just don’t know that now’s the right time, ’s’all. Not like you plan to be a junior solicitor forever, right?” He’s more or less cleared his plate but stabs at a stray wilted leafy green bit just as punctuation. “Same thing.”

Evie shudders. “God forbid,” she says.

“Work that bad?”

She shrugs, and that’s all the response he gets.

-

Evie works at Westerhouse & White, arguably the most prestigious of the private British do-gooder law firms. Headed by George Westerhouse, they take defense cases. Evie works, as far as Jacob can tell, with some sort of anti-eviction/anti-landlord group, though Westerhouse & White is most well-known for fighting extradition and deportation cases.

It’s funny imagining Evie working for Westerhouse. He was some old drinking buddy of their father’s. They’d never been that close with him, but he’d stayed with them sometimes when their father had to travel for longer than he was comfortable leaving them alone for. Mostly he and Evie had run circles around the poor man, sneaking out every night they could just because he didn’t want them to. Not that he ever actually noticed when they did, but it was the principle of the thing.

When she’d applied for the position, Evie had been terrified of some sort of favoritism throwing a wrench in the works. Either by getting the position since Westerhouse had known their father, or not getting the position by virtue of Westerhouse not wanting to appear to play favorites. Turned out it was White rather than Westerhouse who made the hiring decisions, luckily, so there was at least one nervous breakdown averted.

It’s long hours, though the pay is allegedly good. It was pretty much all she talked about the first year she worked there — the cases, the research, absurd challenges by the prosecution. When Jacob thinks about it, he can’t quite put his finger on when she stopped constantly talking about it.

Sometime after they’d met Henry, probably.

-

The sullen silence lasts til the check comes (they split it.) It’s already dark when they get outside, a bit colder than Jacob expected. “Split a cab?” he suggests. He thinks Evie’s place is roughly on the way to his from here, but mostly he just doesn’t want the evening to end like this. It’d be nice to clear the air at least a little bit.

Evie sighs. Jacob has the annoying feeling she’s about to decline when Jacob’s phone starts vibrating in one of his jacket pockets, and it takes him a frantic twenty seconds of rifling through every pocket to find the damned thing before the call goes to voicemail. It’s almost certainly Ned. Ned is the only person who calls him.

Manages to find it finally and answers — “Ned!” he says.

“If you and Evie haven’t disowned each other already, I brought back cake,” Ned says drily.

Which Jacob repeats for Evie, who, in the space of the few seconds needed for Jacob to answer the phone, has slumped against the building, chin ducked into the collar of her coat. She shrugs.

“Evie shrugged at me. I think that means we’re on our way back.”

“Right,” Ned says. “I’ll make sure to have an escape route planned, just in case.”

“Good fellow,” Jacob says. “You’re far too understanding.”

They try to argue in the cab. She calls him reckless again. He tells her she’s insufferable. They’re fighting by rote, though. No spark in it. Jacob can be reckless. Evie can be insufferable. They know this about each other by now. Mostly it’s depressing.

When they make it to Jacob’s, there’s Ned, who affably allows Evie to half-hug him hello in the awkward way they always greet each other. Jacob leaves them to it, back to the bedroom to dig Evie’s gift out of the closet — nevermind, Ned had tracked it down and left it on the bed, god bless you, Ned, you magnificent man. He changes into shirtsleeves and sweatpants while he’s there, though. If he’s home, he gets to be a slob; that’s how these things work.

Evie and Ned have made their way to the living room. She’s curled up on one end of the couch, Ned sitting with one leg across his knee, chin propped on his fist. There’s a bottle of red wine on the table and Evie looks like she’s already most of the way through a glass.

He flops onto the other side of the couch, brown-paper-wrapped package in his lap. Ned takes his leave, claiming he needs to shower; he takes his glass of wine with him.

They exchange gifts — he’s gotten her a fountain pen, one of the old sorts, sturdy (acquired via Ned, naturally.) She’s gotten him a fifth of whiskey and a hunting knife that has to have come from Henry’s shop, there’s no way she had time to trawl for it otherwise. He grins and says, “Two things that go together so well.”

“I hoped you’d feel that way,” she says. She examines the ink-end of the pen, which glints dully in the low light. “This is nice, Jacob. Thank you.”

She sounds terribly stilted. As does he when he says, “You’re welcome. This is, uh, too. Thank you.”

Evie’s lips thin and she looks away, but it doesn’t work. She dissolves into laughter. “We’re so bad at this,” she says.

“We really are,” Jacob says. “Only reason the Western world is still standing. Any better at working together and we’d rule it by now.”

She pours herself another glass of wine. Jacob considers it and takes a swig of whiskey straight from the bottle. It bites, but it’s better than wine.

They sit in silence for long enough that Jacob nearly nods off. And then, stilted again, Evie says, “Can I ask you something? And don’t you start with ‘oh, Evie, you just did.’”

Jacob sighs dramatically and rearranges himself on the couch so he can jab her with his feet if need be. “Well, it is your birthday,” he says. “I suppose I can humor you, then.”

Evie is, per usual, consumately unimpressed by him. “I thought you’d be glad Henry and I…” 

There’s a couple options: finish the sentence for her in a way she wouldn’t approve of (‘You thought I’d be glad you and Henry murdered a man and buried the body in an arboratoreum, what?’). Lightly mock her for not asking an actual question, just saying something and letting it hang. Or, damn it all, be serious for half a moment and maybe actually listening to his sister—

It’s a close call, but he settles for door number three. “Why’s that?” His throat feels constricted. Talking honestly is awful.

“I mean, you never liked him.”

“I mean, I wouldn’t say that,” Jacob says. Evie stares at him flatly, and he rolls his eyes. “What? It’s true! Just because I like giving him a hard time doesn’t mean I hate the man.”

“Funny way of showing it,” Evie says.

Jacob does jab Evie with one foot. She ignores him.

He’s…never really evaluated how he feels about Henry. Which, given he’d crashed the man’s flat with a box full of his sister’s stuff, was maybe a bit weird. But then again, Jacob has make rather a habit of jumping into things headfirst without really thinking about whether he wants to or not. An awful lot of Jacob’s life had been the consequence of either reflex or impulse. Sometimes good — yes, Jacob, absolutely approach that stranger in the back of the illegal fight club you spend your weekends at, the one dressed up too nicely (Ned.) Sometimes bad — yes, Jacob, absolutely involve yourself in gradually escalating vandalism and destruction of property (public, private, and otherwise) with that charming anarchist you met by the tracks (Maxwell.) It’d been the same with riding Evie about Henry. It got a reaction, so he did it. Simple as that.

Feels a bit stupid when he really thinks about it, though.

“There were…things I would’ve talked with you about, if I’d known that,” Evie says.

Dreadful conversation they’re having. Awful tone in Evie’s voice. Hesitant, a bit angry. And he’s not too pleased with himself, though he can’t say why; it’s not like he regrets yanking Henry’s chain so often. He wouldn’t have if the man would actually react every now and then, but he was so placid when Jacob got snide — like he didn’t care at all. Jacob wants to stab the coffee table or something. Non-ideal conflict resolution, sure, but it would be extremely satisfying.

“Evie,” he says.

She looks up but doesn’t say anything.

He holds up his new knife. His birthday knife, he thinks fondly. “Do you want to stab the coffee table.”

There’s a glint in her eye even as she says, “I’m not sure Ned would approve.”

Jacob shrugs. “My coffee table. Picked it off the curb. Far as I know it’s not some irreplacable French relic that just so happened to be discarded at Oxfam’s.”

“Yes, I would like to stab your coffee table.”

He passes her the whiskey, which she wrinkles her nose at. “Drink up first,” he says. “Them’s the rules.”

Evie stabs the coffee table a few times. And then Jacob does. There you go, he thinks. Mutual table stabbing. Almost like we worked through something, isn’t it?

Isn’t long before Jacob is throwing a blanket over Evie, passed out on the couch, and stumbling back to bed himself. He’s careful, as he picks through the darkness, not to trip on anything and risk waking Ned. He probably reeks of whiskey, and there’s a knife lodged in the coffee table; Ned’s got enough reasons to be cross with him without getting woken up at half past midnight to boot.

But when he manages his way under the blankets, Ned is completely still, breathing deep and slow and even. There’s just enough light coming through the curtains that Jacob can make out the way Ned’s hair curls at the nape of his neck.

Next thing he knows, he’s awake, bit of a headache, and the lights are down but he knows it’s morning. He can hear Ned padding about the bedroom, trying to be quiet, mostly doing a good job.

He sits up and rolls his neck. “Evie still here?”

“Her things are,” Ned says. “Though she’s nowhere to be found.”

Ah. The roof, then. It was always the roof.

-

He and Evie had shared a room til they were thirteen, which was when they’d started occasionally fighting in earnest. It’d been a room on the third floor of the estate, with a view out towards the back gardens. It had been far out enough from London that more than a handful of stars were visible. One of the gardeners was a bit of a telescope buff and mentioned whenever there was a meteor shower coming, so at first that had been why Evie and Jacob took to the roof. Just to stargaze, nothing more daring. Jacob had suggested it, but Evie had been the one to be brave enough to do it. Just a matter of wedging the window open and popping out the screen.

It took her the better part of a quarter-hour of teasing him to convince him to follow. He vaguely remembers being terrified, wanting to go back inside — the drop from the edge of the roof had seemed impossibly far down, something impossible to survive. But they’d sat with their backs against the Dorner window, despite the cold, until between them they’d seen enough shooting stars to get bored with the cold and tired enough to actually want to sleep. Jacob had wished on all of them.

They got more daring as they got older — comfortable traversing from edge to edge, dangling their feet over the gutters, sneaking out with cigarettes and pilfered fifths. There was a spot where jumping onto the garden shed was doable, if not paticularly quiet or easy, and when they wanted to sneak out, that was the best way. Onto the garden shed, then down from there, a 10-foot jump that either of them could’ve shattered their ankles taking.

Their father had never quite caught them. He knew, surely, that they snuck out some nights, biking or hitching rides into town. But for whatever reason, he’d never done anything about it. Thank god. Because after a certain point, when Jacob had really starting riling at the way his father’s expectations started to cage him in, when Evie had started trying to meet them instead of fighting them, at least there was some place to go away from him. Home was under open air; inside was where they slept.

-

It’s not quite easy to get onto the roof of Jacob’s building, but it’s not quite hard, either. Out the kitchen window there’s one of those rickety fire escapes hanging off the side, over an alley, and since his flat is the last of the residential units in the building, it’s just a matter of climbing one set of stairs up the escape, then standing on the railing and hauling yourself up. Wouldn’t be possible if the roof were any more slanted at all than it is, but luckily it’s mostly flat. Which, this morning, means that when Jacob hauls himself up, he’s already half-soaked with condensation. He tries not to linger on that thought. Very few things in London are clean, the tops of buildings least so.

There’s Evie, right where he figured she’d be. Perched just where the roof starts slanting up, hugging her knees.

“Good morning,” Jacob says.

“Hungover?”

“Bit, yeah. You?”

Evie tries a smile. “About the same.”

He crosses the rooftop carefully. It’s not so wet that he’s worried about slipping, but the shoes he’s wearing don’t have the grip they once did. He sits next to Evie. She’s picked a good spot, where you can see all the way down one of the main roads. The streetlights are still on, a bit murky in the morning fog. “How’re you feeling?”

“Besides hungover, I take it.” Her voice is dry enough that she can’t be feeling that awful.

“Yeah, more generally than that,” says Jacob.

“Awful,” Evie says bluntly.

Well, then; Jacob stands corrected.

“Nothing feels right. No matter what I do. It's like there's -- it's like there's a crack, Jacob," she says, "running through my entire life. I don't understand it. I don't know if it's always been there, or if it showed up out of nowhere, but I don't know how to fix it."

Jacob wishes he was wearing his heavier jacket. The predawn air is cold and heavy with the promise of rain, and there's a bit of a breeze kicking about here and there, catching him in the side of the face just when he'd thought it had died down. "A crack," he says, to prompt her.

She groans. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees her put her face in her hands. "I hate my job," she says.

He doesn’t know what to say, so he waits.

"I hate it. It's ridiculous; we're all supposed to be doing this great work for the good of other people, but everyone's obsessed with office gossip and who gets what assignment and what that means about promotions -- all this energy spent on petty things that don't matter at all. And the hours..."

"Quit," he says.

"It should've been a good fit; it's an honor just to work there--"

"Quit, Eves," says Jacob. He shifts a little. Sitting on rooftops was easier when he was younger. Now sometimes it does things like make his back hurt. "If they treat you like shit and you don't even like the job, quit. You've got the money." An understatement. "Quit."

Sirens in the distance, then, nearly instantly, more sirens from other places -- a couple cars going to converge on one location then, Jacob figures. They get louder for a bit, then fade into the white noise of the city. What's the emergency? Might be an electric fire or a prank call. Might be someone realizing this is the worst day of their life. Bit bleak to think about.

"I've never done that before," Evie says faintly.

"Hmm?"

"Quit a job."

"It's fun if you do it right," he says, and knocks their shoulders together. "Steal some computer equipment on the way out, or air all the dirty laundry you've gathered in a mass email before you leave..."

"I'm not doing that."

"Don't knock it 'til you've tried it. Some of the best days of my life have been quitting jobs."

Which isn't true, but it makes her laugh. She settles against his shoulder, and there's a little catch in his chest of protectiveness. How does he forget so often that they're the exact same age?

"Not to pry," he starts, which she scoffs at, "but if I'm putting things together right, which, for starters, is never a safe assumption, you broke up with your boyfriend to spend more time at a job you completely hate."

She makes a frustrated noise. "How did you hear about that?"

He'd shrug, but she's still leaned against his shoulder. "Figured if I was returning things on your behalf that we might as well chat for a minute," he says. Then, with sarcasm, "You know how well Gr -- Henry and I get along."

For some reason it feels wrong to use the nickname. Henry had never liked it, which made it Jacob's go-to method for annoying them both. Feels a bit besides the point now.

He'd expected a bit of a reaction at that, but Evie just sighs. "You know how with Dad," she says, then lets the sentence trail off into nothing.

Jacob has no idea what to say, and for once his tongue isn't outpacing him. So he waits.

"He never really recovered after she died," says Evie.

Their mother, she means.

Which, to be entirely accurate, they didn't really have any proof of. It wasn't like either of them remembered what he'd been like before. It was other ways they'd learned, though. An off-handed comment from an aunt, an uncle with a boisterous story about uni escapades. Matching up the reality of their father with those stories seemed ludicrous, like those stories had happened to a completely different person.

"When I got the call, I just..."

"From the hospital."

He feels Evie nod. "I was terrified. Dropped everything."

What would he do if something like that happened to Ned, god forbid? The exact same for starters. Just thinking about it makes him nervous.

"Once I knew he was okay, I stayed scared though. I couldn't stop thinking about what if -- what if he'd actually... I'd be even worse than Dad, Jacob. I don't know what I'd do. I couldn't stop thinking about it, and..."

You should have called me, he nearly says. But last night's argument is still fresh in his head, and he knows why she didn't. Knows why she didn't want to talk about this with him then. But at least they're talking now.

"You panicked," he guesses.

She nods against him again. "I was having panic attacks in the middle of the day when he didn't text me back quick enough. I'd bolt up in the middle of the night to check if he was still breathing." Her voice is halting. "I just went completely mad for a couple of days, and I couldn't take it anymore. I don't know. I needed space, or..."

"I take it you didn't talk about it with him."

"And bother him while he was laid up like that?" She sounds miserable. "The last thing I wanted to do was make *him* reassure *me* while we waited to see how bad the concussion was."

He thinks of Henry wanting to say something about Evie's long hours at work but not wanting to seem unsupportive. "Oh, Eves," he says. He shifts and reaches around her shoulders; she leans closer against his side. "You two like each other too much."

Her voice is shaky. "Doesn't sound like a bad thing to me."

"Sometimes you just have to piss off the people who love you," Jacob says.

Evie sighs. "That doesn't sound like very good advice, no offense."

"That's where you're wrong. It's not advice, it's just a fact of life." He's a bit frustrated trying to put it into words, this thing that he knows down to his bones that Evie needs to know, that Evie doesn't know for some reason. There's this one thing he knows better than her. The only thing he wants is to give it to her. "I mean, you can't be perfect for someone all the time. Unless you hardly ever see them, And I damn well don't want Ned feeling like he has to be perfect all the time, which if I got all bothered I wasn't perfect all the time, he'd feel he was supposed to be, too. Ned pisses me off all the time. He's finicky and pretentious and keeps thinking he can make me enjoy wine if he just tracks down the right vintage. Doesn't mean I don't love him."

Damned easier to say that to Evie than it is to Ned. Bit of a running theme in Jacob’s life right now, and not one he likes.

The sky is getting brighter, although the sun hasn’t quite broached London’s horizon yet. But there’s thin white light coming through the cloud cover. It makes everything look crisp and flat, like a photo.

“I feel awful,” Evie says eventually.

He leans his head against hers. “Red wine hangovers are the worst sort,” he says gravely.

He can all but hear her rolling her eyes. “You know that isn’t what I meant.” She sighs. “That too, though.”

“You’ll feel better if you eat. Probably. That or you’ll throw up, but throwing up should also help.”

“There is leftover cake,” Evie says.

He sits up a little bit and drops his arm from over Evie’s shoulders. Rolls his head from shoulder to shoulder, feels his neck crack. Evie stands slowly, cautious of the slope of the roof, and he watches her pick her way down to the edge.

For a moment he feels just as sickly dizzy as when it’s him standing at the edge, about to hop down onto the fire escape. No matter how many times Jacob’s stood staring down, it still makes his stomach drop. But this vicarious feeling is strange. New. He can’t help but imagine Evie’s foot slipping or the roof crumbling, Evie’s body falling.

She crouches and slips over the side. He hears her feet hit the fire escape. He closes his eyes and breathes in once, twice, slowly. The relief is overwhelming.

He’s got no need to be worried. Evie is even more sure-footed than he is, always has been. But he’s always taken a lot on faith about how strong Evie is, and turns out he was wrong about a lot of it. It’s a wretched feeling.

He follows her back inside. She’s sitting at the breakfast counter, sitting on one of the high stools, swinging one leg. Ned must have retreated back to the bedroom. Jacob sits across from her, and she cuts him a slice. They eat in silence.

“I don’t know that this is making me feel better,” she says after a bit.

“Hmm. Worth a shot. Tea?”

“Yes, please.”

He puts water on and finishes Evie’s half-eaten cake. Evie leaves, looking queasy, and Jacob smiles to himself when she heads straight for the bathroom and the exhaust fan kicks on. He keeps telling Ned that there’s nothing good about the morning after red wine.

She looks a bit better when she comes back, though, and grateful there’s already tea where she was sitting.

“Better?” he asks.

She nods. She takes a few sips, swishes them around her mouth, swallows with a grimace. Repeats the ritual a few times.

“We do have mouthwash.”

“I know, I found it,” she says. “Still.”

Jacob pokes through the paper, spread out on the counter. He likes the crime blotter and the classifieds most.

“Can you…” says Evie.

Jacob looks up; her head is propped against one hand with her thumb digging into her temple. “Maybe,” he says, to give her an excuse to glare at him.

She does. “I was going to say, can you…un-break up with someone. After this long.” 

“He’ll take you back, Evie. In a heartbeat. You know it.”

It’s not a surprise there’s bags under her eyes, or that the sweatshirt she’s borrowing is too big for her. It’s not a surprise that Evie is really just as fucked as him when it comes to figuring things out. She takes it a little better, maybe. But the gap Jacob’s been imagining for years…it’s not real.

“Somehow that makes it all so much worse,” she says miserably.

“It’s pretty humiliating to cock up and have someone just wave it off — oh, don’t look at me like that, I’m not kidding at all.” Jacob tears off a strip of the newspaper and wads it up into a ball about the size of his fingernail, then flicks it at her. She lets it hit her smack in the middle of her forehead. “Really. It’s the worst. At least if someone’s mad at you, you feel like you’re suffering through your justly earned punishment, y’know? When they forgive you just like that, the hell are you supposed to do?”

“Learn from your mistakes and move on? God forbid,” says Evie.

“Precisely.”

Evie puts her face in her hands, muffling a groan. Jacob flicks another wadded-up bit of newspaper at her head but misses this time.

“The famous Frye family conflict resolution skillset at work,” he says. His next newspaper ball hits her hand. “On the one hand, you could apologize. On the other, you could continue marching through life with stiff upper lip, never admitting to a single weakness, and never expressing a single emotion.”

“You’re onto something,” Evie says, still into her hands.

“A genius for repression truly does run in our family.”

Evie only raises her head to drink her tea. “I need to talk to him, don’t I. In person.”

Jacob nods, and Evie immediately takes out her phone and starts texting. “Wait a minute,” he says. “I thought you said in person.”

Evie fires something off and then lets the phone clatter out of her hands onto the tabletop, looking horrified by herself for a moment. “I just told him I’d be by this afternoon.”

“Well then.”

“Can I use your shower?”

Jacob gestures *be my guest*, and just like that, Evie is gone.

-

He’d met Ned at one of Toppington’s fights. It had been one of the first he’d fought at — three rounds against some Northern-ish boxer-type who’d nearly gotten the better of him mostly because Jacob had been drinking. He still came out on top, just with a smashed nose and blackening eye.

Reason told him he’d best at least take a breather, ice the worst of his injuries, get Toppington’s cutman to give him a once-over. But Jacob had never been good at doing the sensible thing, and once he’d collected his prize money — not that he needed it — he wandered back out to the ring, to the audience encircling it.

Someone had caught his eye, see.

Most of the time, Jacob would realize later in life, that meant trouble. Jacob liked trouble and took a shine to people good at starting it. Most every time he felt drawn to someone, it ended poorly for him.

But there’d been this older-looking man, hard to get a read on, dressed a bit too formally for the place but still blending in pretty well. Standing in the back, near the doors, alone, staring. Still there by the time Jacob circled round, arms crossed, leaning against the wall nonchalantly. He wore wireless glasses. A bit taller than Jacob, though not by much, and narrower, but not slight. He cocked his head and watched Jacob as Jacob wandered up, trying at casual. And failing, most likely, based on the way the stranger wasn’t shy about watching him.

“You’re a bit dressed up for this sort of crowd,” Jacob tried.

The stranger shrugged. “There’s no such thing as overdressed,” he said. Ah, an American accent; how interesting.

“I’m pretty sure there is. Not that you are, mind you, but it definitely exists.” He rolled a shoulder and winced. “Drop someone in here who’s just been at the opera, you’ll see overdressed.”

The man shook his head. “That’s dressing inappropriately for the occasion,” he said. “Not being overdressed.”

“If you say so, mate.”

“Ned Wynert,” said the man, extending a hand.

Jacob looked at his own hand for a second, considering; no fresh blood, at least. “Jacob Frye,” he said.

Drily, jerking his head towards the stands, Ned said, “I’d heard.”

Which Jacob grinned at. Wasn’t his fault he was good with a crowd. “So, what brings you here tonight, Mr. Wynert? Don’t tell me you’re next in the ring.”

Ned rolled his eyes. He reached inside his jacket and pulled out what looked to be a battered flask. “Just spectating tonight,” he said. “But you never know.” He took an easy pull, then screwed the top back on and sort of tilted it in Jacob’s direction, one brow raised.

Drinking from strangers’ flasks? Absolutely a terrible decision. So of course he would. He leaned against the wall a bit closer to Ned than he needed to and took it. Took a whiff before he downed anything — whiskey, and not the cheapest sort, either. “I’ll keep that in mind then. If Toppington threatens me with a mystery opponent, I’ll know it’s you.”

He took a drink and passed the flask back. “I think it’d be a short fight,” said Ned.

“Probably,” said Jacob. “You’d wipe the floor with me, I bet.”

Ned snorted at that.

The next match was starting. Would have been a perfect time to excuse himself and head back to where the rest of the fighters were, where the painkillers and bags of ice were.

He didn’t.

-

For the next hour or so, Evie swings through irritated determination and self-loathing panic probably five or six times. Jacob offers to call a cab so she can show up earlier and get it over with, which Evie shakes off as an absurd suggestion. She’s supposed to get there at two; deviating from the plan would be a violation of the natural order of things, or something like that.

The rain sets in just before they’re supposed to leave. (“You don’t have to come with me,” Evie had said, and Jacob had shook his head and said, “Are you kidding me? I wouldn’t miss this for the world.” She’d punched his arm, but what he’d meant was I am trying very hard to be supportive, and she’d picked up on that. Probably.) Evie just grabs the umbrella by the door (Ned’s) instead of commenting on it.

Which, well, fine. Jacob knows better than to get in the way when Evie’s like this.

In the time it takes them to get down the stairs, the rain isn’t so much a steady patter anymore as a proper downpour. When Jacob throws the door open, you can’t even see to the end of the street. It’s all gone gray and blurry. “Oh, no, it’s raining,” he says, letting his voice go a little mocking. “We should probably call the whole thing off. Tell Henry you’re not coming.”

Evie whacks him in the shin with the umbrella and steps out first. He follows, though he’s broad-shouldered enough they can’t actually quite both fit under the damned thing. Oh, well. One of his shoulders gets wet. Luckily it’s barely a minute before Evie flings her arm out and a cab pulls slowly to the curb, careful not to slosh them.

Jacob climbs in first, crawls all the way across the back, and Evie manages to close the umbrella and tumble in without catching the umbrella on the top of the cab while she closes it, getting one foot soaked by accidentally stepping over the curb, or standing in the rain with a closed umbrella. That’s something Evie is definitely better at than Jacob. He can’t begrudge her it, though.

The cabbie prompts them for an address. Evie arranges the umbrella on the floor so it doesn’t get either of them wet. Jacob rolls his eyes and gives him the address of the shop, and they’re off.

Jacob tips his head back and listens to the rain on the roof. He can feel Evie’s knee bouncing up and down nervously, jostling the taxi just enough to feel. When he cracks open one eye to glare at her lazily, she’s hunched over her phone, tapping away with both thumbs. “Don’t tell me you’re working this all out over text right now and we didn’t have to bother with the cab,” he drawls.

She doesn’t even bother to glare back at him, just shakes her head and keeps working at whatever it is she’s doing. It’s dim enough out with all the rain that the streetlights are on and Evie’s face is lit up a bit by the white light of her phone. There’s a few strands loose from the braided updo she always does, falling into her face.

There’s not a lot of pictures of their mother. Or there’s not many they’ve seen. But relatives always say Evie looks like her. There’d been once, in the last days, when Father had accidentally called her Cecily.

It’s hard to imagine dying in the company of someone who looks like your long-dead partner. Not for the first time, he wonders if that was part of why Evie and Father had gotten along less and less the older she’d gotten. Evie looked more and more like Cecily but was more and more her own woman.

And Father had always been bad at letting go.

Both of them had overcompensated by being too willing to let go, probably. Jacob with his flightiness and willingness to ruin relationships left and right, Evie with her obsession with work always there to use an excuse when things got to be too much. With a pang, Jacob realizes how much he misses Ned. They’ve barely talked the last few days, and every conversation they’ve had has been about Evie. He’d better do something nice for the man after all this.

“Send this for me,” Evie says, and Jacob finds her phone abruptly in his lap.

He picks it up. It’s an email: To Nelson and partners… it starts. “You’re actually quitting,” he says, a bit shocked.

“Don’t read it, just send it. I — I can’t bring myself to hit send, Jacob, would you—”

He shakes his head and taps the button. “Done. Didn’t think you had it in you, Eves.”

“Oh, my god,” she says, and laughs, slumping back against the seat, pinching the bridge of her nose. “It’s done. Shit.”

“That’s it, then?”

“Not quite,” she says. “I said it was because of my health — that I would take this week off and come in at the start of next to wrap things up for the next person…”

“Psh, that hardly counts as quitting,” he says. “You’re far too nice, Eves. Shoulda told ‘em where to shove it.”

“I will probably need a character reference for whatever I do next, Jacob,” she says. And then she sighs shakily through her teeth. “I did it. Oh my god.”

“One life-changing decision for the day down, just one to go,” says Jacob.

“I’m going to have a heart attack,” says Evie. “What do I even say to him?”

“I’m no expert,” says Jacob, “but I’d start with an apology.”

It’s testament to how freaked out about it all Evie is that she doesn’t use his jab as an excuse to hit him or insult him or something. “I can’t do this,” she says.

“Deep breaths,” says Jacob, a little sarcastically, then leans forward. “We’re not turning this cab around. Driver, if she asks you to turn the cab around, don’t listen to her.”

“Jacob!”

“What?” he says, settling back, crossing his arms. “It’s for your own good.”

She groans and rubs at the bridge of her nose. Jacob finds himself grinning. He leans his head against the side of the cab to watch rain roll down the windows — it’s still really coming down.

Evie’s phone buzzes on the seat between them. “Are you going to…” Jacob starts.

“Absolutely not,” says Evie. “I don’t know who it is, I don’t care, I can’t.”

He could tease — tell her it’s her job telling her they’ll never cope without her, what can they do to make her say, or is it Henry? Even better — but he’s had his fun, and he is trying to be supportive about this whole thing, isn’t he? So he lets it go. He says nothing when she grabs the phone and stuffs it in the pocket of her coat without checking to see what the notification is from.

After a few minutes Evie’s expression has gone stony. She’s sitting up ramrod straight, as if a nun’s about to wander round and rap her knuckles if her posture’s off.

“You look serious,” Jacob says.

She glares at him out of the corner of her eye. “I am,” she says.

They’re not far off now. A few more streets and that’s it: the shop and Henry’s flat above it.

“I should have asked where he wanted to meet,” Evie says, as if to herself. “I didn’t ask if he’d be home or at the shop.”

Jacob shakes his head and goes back to watching the rain on the windows. “Process of elimination, you’ll figure it out.”

Just a block off now. “I don’t know,” Evie says suddenly. “What if—” And then, the moment they round the corner, “Oh, my god, is he waiting in the rain? What an absolute idiot—”

Evie flings the door open, jumps out without the umbrella, and slams the door without looking back once.

Jacob stares at where she was sitting for a moment. “Well, that was easier than expected,” he says to no one.

“Where’ll it be for you, then?” the cabbie asks him.

Jacob starts with his address, then something occurs to him. “Scratch that,” he says. “Do you know somewhere I can buy a really nice bottle of wine?”

They pull past Green’s Antiquities, heading for the main road. Henry and Evie, the two sentimental idiots, are actually just standing there together in the rain, foreheads resting together. He shakes his head and looks away when Evie goes in for the kiss. Making out in the rain. Heterosexual nonsense.

Bit heart-warming, though.

He nearly texts Evie something teasing, but instead he starts to text Ned. Then thinks no — hits the call button instead. He gets Ned’s voicemail, which he always does; Ned hates answering the phone even when he’s not got work. “Mission accomplished,” he says gravely, after the tone.

Jacob doesn’t want to end up like his father. Seeing Evie come close has spooked him and has him entirely off-balance, enough that he catches himself just breathing into Ned’s voicemail like a creep for slightly too long. “Sorry,” he says. “Zoned out there for a second. Swing by tonight if you can, would you?”

God, he doesn’t ever want it to be him and Ned working out some fuck-up in the rain. It could so easily be him startling away like a spooked horse if Ned does something a bit too nice. It’s been him before, in other relationships. Can’t let it be this one, too.

“I miss you, after all,” he says. It comes out stiff, but it’ll have to do. He hangs up before he can overthink it. He thinks about that gaudy American accent and Ned shaking his head at street food, Ned who hates art reproductions on postcards but loves Oxford Street in winter once they put up the lights. It’s a dizzying feeling, one he wants to lean away from. But he won’t. He’s got his own mistakes to make, he’s been making his own mistakes since he could do anything at all. But he’ll be damned if any of them ever have to do with being afraid to love Ned.

Even if it means red wine every now and then.

**Author's Note:**

> title taken from the [austin wintory](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBTBJURZZDU) piece. er, if you've made it this far, thank you for reading my very self-indulgent monster of a piece for a videogame from 2015 <3\. hopefully that's at least one person
> 
> here's a [tumblr link to reblog](https://adigeon.tumblr.com/post/171794139707/peace-and-i-are-strangers-grown-28ghosts) if it strikes your fancy


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